In one corner, the ground was too shaded by an old apple tree to be of use: they gave this to Gabriella for her garden. She had attached particularly to her person a little negress of about the same age--her Milly, the color of a ripe gourd. So when in spring the gardener began to make his garden, with her grandmother sometimes standing over him, directing, Gabriella, taking her little chair to the apple tree,--with some pretended needle-work and a real switch,--would set Milly to work making hers. Nothing that they put into the earth ever was heard of again, though they would sometimes make the same garden over every day for a week. So that more than once, forsaking seed, they pulled off the tops of green things near by, planted these, and so had a perfect garden in an hour. Then Gabriella, seated under the apple tree, would order Milly to water the flowers from the pump; and taking her switch and calling Milly close, she would give her a sharp rap or two around the bare legs (for that was expected), and tell her that if she didn't stop being so trifling, she would sell her South to the plantations. Whereupon Milly, injured more in heart than legs, and dropping the watering-pot, would begin to bore her dirty fists into her eyes. Then Gabriella would say repentantly:-- "No, I won't, Milly! And you needn't work any more to-day. And you can have part of my garden if you want it." Milly, smiling across the mud on her cheeks, would murmur:-- "You ain' goin' sell yo' Milly down South, is you, Miss Gabriella?" "_I_ won't. But I'm not so sure about grandmother, Milly. You know she WILL do it sometimes. Our cotton's got to be picked by SOMEBODY, and who's to do it but you lazy negroes?" In those days the apple tree would be blooming, and the petals would sift down on Gabriella. Looking up at the marriage bell of blossoms, and speaking in the language of her grandmother, she would say:-- "Milly, when I grow up and get married, I am going to be married out of doors in spring under an apple tree." "I don' know whah _I_ gwine be married," Milly would say with a hoarse, careless cackle. "I 'spec' in a brier-patch." Gabriella's first discovery of what meanness human nature can exhibit was connected with this garden. So long as everything was sour and green, she could play there by the hour; but as soon as anything got ripe and delicious, the gate with the high latch was shut and she could never enter it unguarded. What tears she shed outside the fence as she peeped through! When they did take her in, they always held her by the hand. "DON'T hold my hand, Sam," pleadingly to the negro gardener. "It's so HOT!" "You fall down and hurt yourself." "How absurd, Sam! The idea of my falling down when I am walking along slowly!" "You get lost." "How can you say anything so amusing as that, Sam! Did I ever get lost in here?" "Snakes bite you." "Why do you think they'd bite ME, Sam? They have never been known to bite anybody else."